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STORY: Cell phone video shows a Palestinian mother hugging her son, who was just released from an Israeli prison near Hebron in the occupied West Bank last month.

:: July 24, 2024

Overwhelmed with emotion, she asks if she's really seeing her son.

UPSOUND: "Are you Hamza? Are you Hamza?"

A new report out by an Israeli rights group says Palestinian prisoners held by Israel are subject to a systematic policy of abuse and torture, since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7.

Sarit Michaeli is a spokesperson for B'tselem, which issued the report.

"So the people we interviewed for the report have actually been released recently. So clearly Israel does not accuse them of anything. Yet they still experience the same the same kind of systemic abuse and torture that all Palestinian prisoners experience now throughout all of Israel's detention system."

The group said the report was based on interviews with 55 Palestinians from Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, who were detained in Israeli prisons since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that set off the war, most of them without being tried.

:: July 29, 2024

It comes nine days after the Israeli military detained nine soldiers accused of severe abuse of a Palestinian prisoner in a military facility. Those arrests touched off protests by right-wing activists defending the accused soldiers.

Israeli media reports say the victim, a member of an elite Hamas unit, was subject to sexual assault.

MICHAELI: "So firstly, it's important to tell the stories of the victims of people who've been exposed to horrific abuse in Israel's prison system. Additionally, this publication is meant to change the reality. Therefore, B'Tselem has called as appeal to all nations and to all relevant institutions, including the International Criminal Court, to intervene to end this reality and to hold Israeli policymakers accountable for what is going on, for the torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prison facilities."

A spokesperson for the Israel Prison Service said that all prisoners were treated according to the law and all basic rights were fully applied by professionally trained guards.

The Israeli military, which runs some detention facilities where Palestinian prisoners have been held, said that it operated according to the rule of law and any specific claims of abuse were investigated.

:: July 8, 2024

Even before last month's arrest of the nine Israeli soldiers, Palestinians held by Israel had described abuse within the system.

Moazaz Obaiyat was released from a detention center in July, where he'd been held since October. He spoke to Reuters from a hospital bed in Bethlehem.

:: July 11, 2024

OBAIYAT: "Life in jail since Oct. 7 is a life that no human on earth can imagine in general, especially in the Negev prison, which is like Guantanamo. It is a prison in the Negev desert down at the bottom of Palestine on the map. This prison is isolated from the world. They (Israeli forces) act in the most disgusting and tough torture on earth against isolated detainees handcuffed, hungry and ill."

The report from B'Tselem, a group that documents human rights violations by Israel in the occupied West Bank and other areas, said the harsh treatment was a deliberate policy implemented under the direction of the hardline National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

A prison service spokesperson said that since the Oct. 7 attack, Ben-Gvir had ordered that prison conditions be made more strict to reverse an improvement in conditions allowed previously.